


This Is Not The End

by Cryptographic_Delurk



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Classism, Gen, Legion of the Dead, Non-Warden Aeducan, cw: harm to sigrun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:07:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24552862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cryptographic_Delurk/pseuds/Cryptographic_Delurk
Summary: In exile, Princess Aeducan travelled far through the Deep Roads to Ivo Thaig, where she was taken in by the Legion of the Dead.
Relationships: Female Aeducan & Female Brosca (Dragon Age)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 9





	This Is Not The End

They said everyone was the same here, made equal by their return to the Stone, stripped of caste and possession and all honours or dishonours save that of the glorious second death. But it was not true. It was the same here as it ever was. The Nobles knew how to read and write and speak. And the Warriors knew how to fight. The Merchants knew how to balance a ledger. And Dusters didn’t know a damn thing, especially not how to die.

Everyone knew she was Princess of Orzammar. They laughed about it often enough. The Warrior Princess who had wandered and fought and cried her way through the Deep Roads, prying weapons and armour from darkspawn and corpses and tezpadam, until she stumbled upon the Legion in Ivo Thaig and flung herself at their feet. She had been starved and skinny as a rail, and they joked she had gone mad eating darkspawn flesh. Nonsense. She knew the dangers. She was second child of House Aeducan, beloved by all. She had won the Proving held in her own honour. She had been groomed from the day of her birth to lead expeditions into the Deep Roads in the name of her House. Of course she knew better than to gorge herself on tainted flesh. But they didn’t laugh at her for that reason. They only laughed because they understood she was higher and better and given more charmed a life than them, and so they must drag her low.

“It’s a swan song I’ve heard many times before,” Kardol said. “It means nothing to any of us out here.” They tattooed her brow and lips black, and she would not forgive Kardol for it.

But Kardol had been good to her in a way. He’d understood that if Bhelen knew she survived in the Deep Roads, he would send assassins. Bhelen would not allow any competition for the throne to survive, no matter how nominally dead that competition was. When they gave her a set of heavy armour, it came complete with full helmet to hide her face. And whenever he sent emissaries to Orzammar for supplies and recruits, he warned them that dead men didn’t talk.

So she had her armour and blade, and cleaned and polished them fastidiously. And also a piece of flint and a round metal shield and a set of bone cutlery she’d found in a nest of spiders. Sigrun seemed to take glee in stealing it from her when she wasn’t paying attention. Until one day she’d grabbed Sigrun by the pigtails and twisted until tears came out, because she had nothing to her name and a Duster thought it their right to steal it anyhow.

“Sigrun didn’t deserve that,” Varlan sighed. “You are clever and talented and have a gift for leadership. If only you would use it. Even here you could flourish.”

“And are you one to speak?” she asked. “What do you know about talent or leadership? You nearly bankrupt House Vollney with your gambling habit, before they cast you out. That is all you’ll ever be.”

But news from Orzammar ran in and out, a changing kaleidoscope of politics she no longer had control over. Princess Aeducan cried for her father. She dreamed less and less about the throne she would never have, and dreamed more and more about the sky she had never seen. Surfacer Dwarves could never return to the safety of who they were in Orzammar – even now she stood by what she had told to Lord Dace. But she could hardly return from where she was now either. At least on the surface, Gorim was waiting for her somewhere, faithful servant that he was. Somewhere there were armies and battles and loves and friends, and more than endless tunnels chock full of darkspawn and ruins and death, which would only get worse once the Blight ended.

If she was honest, Sigrun’s cheerful disposition and complete acceptance of her fate grated worse than the irreverence.

In the end someone came through. An ugly drunk, a tall human, a lithe elf, and the Warden – a casteless with shame stamped on her face, and a firm lip and chin held too high. Kardol signalled to keep helmet on and stay out of sight, and Princess Aeducan listened as the Duster Warden explained her purpose and told Kardol to move the line.

Kardol was clearly about to tell the Warden she was on her own, when Princess Aeducan spoke up.

“I’ll help move the line for you.”

Kardol shook his head in frustration, but Princess Aeducan ignored it. In probably the first display of respect since she’d been there, the Warden nodded and stepped aside to make room for her at the front of the vanguard. Aeducan stepped into it and, two swordsmen side by side, they pressed forward across the bridge to the Gates of Bownammer.

==

“If you find your Paragon, who do you plan to put on the throne?” Aeducan asked, between heavy breaths. Before Kardol caught up to them. Before the darkspawn returned.

The Duster Warden cracked her neck and caught her breath, and for a second seemed to reach back at the members of her party before thinking better of it.

“I can’t tell you how much I hate this place – Orzammar and the Assembly and every prick that’s ever graced the Diamond Quarter. But if I back Aeducan, my nephew will sit on the throne someday. Maybe it will mean something for a Duster’s son to be up there.”

In spite of everything, Princess Aeducan loved Orzammar – all its rules and trappings and failures and pomp and circumstance. This person was so different than her, it was near unfathomable. And yet the Duster’s plan made sense. She hated Bhelen. But she considered the truth not of today or tomorrow, but of when they all returned to the Stone. Would she rather have an Aeducan nephew on the throne, or a Harrowmont one?

“An Aeducan should have the throne,” she said, because it was true. Although in the truest sense it should be her. _It should be me. Me._ _Me._

Kardol ran up from behind and clapped her on the shoulder. “I’ll give you credit for backbone, Legionnaire. You cut a line through the spawn.” He nodded to the both of them. “Still no sense in your head, but you’ve got skill.”

It broke the moment, and she flushed and retreated before she was discovered. But Kardol was not finished with her. Once the Warden’s party moved on, he approached.

“I’m going to take the Legion topside to help with the Blight, just as soon as this mess with the throne is sorted out.”

“I thought you were holding out for a _good_ _d_ _warven reason_?” she mocked.

“I was,” Kardol agreed, and nodded to the path the Warden and her party had taken forward. “And you just saw her walk by. She’s going places. And she’s one of us.”

An opportunity was an opportunity. “So we’re heading to the surface?” _Through the gates of Orzammar?_ she wondered.

“ _I_ am,” Kardol corrected. “You’re staying behind.”

“What?! _Why_?!” she demanded.

“Because I said so.” And then after a beat he amended, “Because you’re going to get yourself killed, Legionnaire. And not just symbolically.”

“I’ll get myself killed down here just as easily.”

“You won’t,” Kardol said. “I’m sending you to help lead the expedition to Kal'Hirol. There are tunnels there to the surface. You’ll help cut off the darkspawn’s retreat, once the big one’s gone. What you decide from there is up to you, Legionnaire.”

“Sending me to lead a bunch of people that would just as soon see me chopped against the Stone,” she muttered. But her heart wasn’t in it.

“What? Do you want me to say that I believe in you, Aeducan?” Kardol sighed. “I do.”

He gave her an expedition party to lead through the Deep Roads, just as she’d always been groomed to do. And he assigned Sigrun as their only scout, which meant Princess Aeducan had no choice but to treat her with care and magnanimity. And when the time came, there was nothing for her to do but depart.


End file.
